A way to introduce old hits to the new generation! Used at a pivotal point in the fourth season of Stranger Thingsthe song Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush catapulted to 4th on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2022, 37 years after its release in 1985.
After Wednesday Addams’ wild dance at the Nevermore Academy prom, Goo Goo Mucka song by The Cramps released in 1981, saw its number of plays increase by 9,500% on Spotify in November 2022.
The music platform announced on Twitter last Monday that the number of listens to Long Long Timethe ballad by Linda Ronstadt which spent 12 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned the singer a Grammy nomination in… 1970, increased by 4,900% in the United States alone, in the wake of the broadcast of episode 3 of The Last of Us on HBO.
From Money Heist which brought up to date Bella Ciao, an Italian revolt song whose lyrics were written in 1944, we know that a hit series can turn a dated song into a global hit. How do shows unearth old hits and bring them back to life in their soundtracks?
A song at the heart of the story
The use of these hits in the series is always based on the same device: intradiegetic music. This means that these old songs are present in the action of the series and are heard by the characters.
Rarely is a song so pivotal that it ends up giving the episode its title. But the song Long Long Time is very important in the love story between Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) in episode 3 of The Last of Us. Linda Ronstadt’s title is played three times in the episode: when Frank plays it awkwardly on the antique piano, when Bill interprets it movingly on the antique piano and finally, when the seventies hit plays on the car radio. of Bill and closes the episode.
Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, the showrunners of The Last of Us, took time to find the rare pearl. They were looking for “an incredibly sad song about wanting love, never getting it and making peace with the fact that you will always be alone”, summarizes Neil Druckmann, in the columns ofindiwire.
Craig Mazin texted friend Seth Rudetsky, a ‘music encyclopedia’ and buddy who hosts the music show SiriusXM on Broadway. Less than thirty seconds later, the latter offered him the Linda Ronstadt tube.
In the series, the first two iterations of the song reveal Bill’s loneliness, mark the beginning of the relationship between Bill and Frank and its lyrics announce that this relationship will last a long time: “And I think I’m gonna love you for a long long time” (“I think I will love you for a very, very long time”).
The third iteration of the song on the car radio has a double function. It announces the long relationship that will unite the two heroes of the series, Joel and Ellie. It is also a nod to the spectators who will recognize themselves in the exchange between this fifty-year-old hero and this teenager. “Do you know Linda Ronstadt? asks Joel. ” Of course not ! Ellie replies cheekily.
A tube that vibrates like the character
Same thing in season 4 of Stranger Things. Running Up That Hill of Kate Bush is an integral part of the story. Better than that, the 1980s hit becomes, for one of the characters, Max, the music that resonates with the intense and varied emotional experiences she undergoes and hooks her back to life.
The musical supervisor of Stranger Things, Nora Felder, explains why she offered this title to executive producers Matt and Ross Duffer at variety “The possible connection between his low chords and Max’s emotional struggles immediately struck me.”
Same strategy in Tim Burton’s series, Wednesday, Goo Goo Muck is the subject of a jerky dance scene at the prom for Never More (which the brilliant actress Jenna Ortega partly improvises). This song mixing rockabilly, garage rock and punk rock tells the rather banal story of a young man who is ready to do battle, but with a whole vocabulary around horror and fantasy. A title that fits Wednesday Addams well: “Cramps are perfect for Wednesday. They are on his mind, like Siouxsie and Joy Division. I am a former goth. To work with the music that I love, to find the right moment, the track had to be fun, quirky and lend itself to Wednesday’s personality,” Jen Malone, who oversees Wednesday’s music with Nicole Weisberg, tells our colleagues at Variety.
The Last of Uswhose fourth episode is available this Monday on Amazon Prime Video in France, should unearth other old hits, like never let me down Again by Depeche Mode released in 1987 which announces, at the end of episode 1, that things are going to go wrong. In this story, the music has a very important role since it is a code used by the smugglers Frank, Bill, Joel and Tess: when a hit from the 1960s sounds, RAS, when a hit from the 1970 rings, the merchandise is there, but when a 1980s hit plays, trouble is not far away.
While music platforms, video streaming services, artists and the series all benefit from the renewed vitality of the songs used in the soundtrack, unearthing a hit is not an end in itself. “Our job is not to create viral moments, but to serve the story and the director, to find the right song for the scene”, concludes Jen Malone.